CHAP. XVIII. Of Tyranny.

Sec.199. AS usurpation is the
exercise of power, which another hath a right to; so tyranny is the exercise of
power beyond right, which no body can have a right to. And this is making use
of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under
it, but for his own private separate advantage. When the governor, however
intitled, makes not the law, but his will, the rule; and his commands and
actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people,
but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other
irregular passion.

Sec.200. If one can doubt this to be truth, or reason, because it comes
from the obscure hand of a subject, I hope the authority of a king will make it
pass with him. King James the first, in his speech to the parliament, 1603,
tells them thus, I will ever prefer the weal of the public, and of the whole
commonwealth, in making of good laws and constitutions, to any particular and
private ends of mine; thinking ever the wealth and weal of the commonwealth to
be my greatest weal and worldly felicity; a point wherein a lawful king doth
directly differ from a tyrant: for I do acknowledge, that the special and
greatest point of difference that is between a rightful king and an usurping
tyrant, is this, that whereas the proud and ambitious tyrant doth think his
kingdom and people are only ordained for satisfaction of his desires and
unreasonable appetites, the righteous and just king doth by the contrary
acknowledge himself to be ordained for the procuring of the wealth and property
of his people, And again, in his speech to the parliament, 1609, he hath these
words, The king binds himself by a double oath, to the observation of the
fundamental laws of his kingdom; tacitly, as by being a king, and so bound to
protect as well the people, as the laws of his kingdom; and expressly, by his
oath at his coronation, so as every just king, in a settled kingdom, is bound
to observe that paction made to his people, by his laws, in framing his
government agreeable thereunto, according to that paction which God made with
Noah after the deluge. Hereafter, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and
summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease while the earth
remaineth. And therefore a king governing in a settled kingdom, leaves to be a
king, and degenerates into a tyrant, as soon as he leaves off to rule according
to his laws, And a little after, Therefore all kings that are not tyrants, or
perjured, will be glad to bound themselves within the limits of their laws; and
they that persuade them the contrary, are vipers, and pests both against them
and the commonwealth. Thus that learned king, who well understood the notion of
things, makes the difference betwixt a king and a tyrant to consist only in
this, that one makes the laws the bounds of his power, and the good of the
public, the end of his government; the other makes all give way to his own will
and appetite.

Sec.201. It is a mistake, to think this fault is proper only to monarchies;
other forms of government are liable to it, as well as that: for wherever the
power, that is put in any hands for the government of the people, and the
preservation of their properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to
impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the arbitrary and irregular commands of
those that have it; there it presently becomes tyranny, whether those that thus
use it are one or many. Thus we read of the thirty tyrants at Athens, as well
as one at Syracuse; and the intolerable dominion of the Decemviri at Rome was
nothing better.

Sec.202. Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to
another's harm; and whosoever in authority exceeds the power given him by the
law, and makes use of the force he has under his command, to compass that upon
the subject, which the law allows not, ceases in that to be a magistrate; and,
acting without authority, may be opposed, as any other man, who by force
invades the right of another. This is acknowledged in subordinate magistrates.
He that hath authority to seize my person in the street, may be opposed as a
thief and a robber, if he endeavours to break into my house to execute a writ,
notwithstanding that I know he has such a warrant, and such a legal authority,
as will impower him to arrest me abroad. And why this should not hold in the
highest, as well as in the most inferior magistrate, I would gladly be
informed. Is it reasonable, that the eldest brother, because he has the
greatest part of his father's estate, should thereby have a right to take away
any of his younger brothers portions? or that a rich man, who possessed a whole
country, should from thence have a right to seize, when he pleased, the cottage
and garden of his poor neighbour? The being rightfully possessed of great power
and riches, exceedingly beyond the greatest part of the sons of Adam, is so far
from being an excuse, much less a reason, for rapine and oppression, which the
endamaging another without authority is, that it is a great aggravation of it:
for the exceeding the bounds of authority is no more a right in a great, than
in a petty officer; no more justifiable in a king than a constable; but is so
much the worse in him, in that he has more trust put in him, has already a much
greater share than the rest of his brethren, and is supposed, from the
advantages of his education, employment, and counsellors, to be more knowing in
the measures of right and wrong.

Sec.203. May the commands then of a prince be opposed? may he be resisted
as often as any one shall find himself aggrieved, and but imagine he has not
right done him? This will unhinge and overturn all polities, and, instead of
government and order, leave nothing but anarchy and confusion.

Sec.204. To this I answer, that force is to be opposed to nothing, but to
unjust and unlawful force; whoever makes any opposition in any other case,
draws on himself a just condemnation both from God and man; and so no such
danger or confusion will follow, as is often suggested: for,

Sec.205. First, As, in some countries, the person of the prince by the law
is sacred; and so, whatever he commands or does, his person is still free from
all question or violence, not liable to force, or any judicial censure or
condemnation. But yet opposition may be made to the illegal acts of any
inferior officer, or other commissioned by him; unless he will, by actually
putting himself into a state of war with his people, dissolve the government,
and leave them to that defence which belongs to every one in the state of
nature: for of such things who can tell what the end will be? and a neighbour
kingdom has shewed the world an odd example. In all other cases the sacredness
of the person exempts him from all inconveniencies, whereby he is secure,
whilst the government stands, from all violence and harm whatsoever; than which
there cannot be a wiser constitution: for the harm he can do in his own person
not being likely to happen often, nor to extend itself far; nor being able by
his single strength to subvert the laws, nor oppress the body of the people,
should any prince have so much weakness, and ill nature as to be willing to do
it, the inconveniency of some particular mischiefs, that may happen sometimes,
when a heady prince comes to the throne, are well recompensed by the peace of
the public, and security of the government, in the person of the chief
magistrate, thus set out of the reach of danger: it being safer for the body,
that some few private men should be sometimes in danger to suffer, than that
the head of the republic should be easily, and upon slight occasions, exposed.

Sec.206. Secondly, But this privilege, belonging only to the king's person,
hinders not, but they may be questioned, opposed, and resisted, who use unjust
force, though they pretend a commission from him, which the law authorizes not;
as is plain in the case of him that has the king's writ to arrest a man, which
is a full commission from the king; and yet he that has it cannot break open a
man's house to do it, nor execute this command of the king upon certain days,
nor in certain places, though this commission have no such exception in it; but
they are the limitations of the law, which if any one transgress, the king's
commission excuses him not: for the king's authority being given him only by
the law, he cannot impower any one to act against the law, or justify him, by
his commission, in so doing; the commission, or command of any magistrate,
where he has no authority, being as void and insignificant, as that of any
private man; the difference between the one and the other, being that the
magistrate has some authority so far, and to such ends, and the private man has
none at all: for it is not the commission, but the authority, that gives the
right of acting; and against the laws there can be no authority. But,
notwithstanding such resistance, the king's person and authority are still both
secured, and so no danger to governor or government,

Sec.207. Thirdly, Supposing a government wherein the person of the chief
magistrate is not thus sacred; yet this doctrine of the lawfulness of resisting
all unlawful exercises of his power, will not upon every slight occasion
indanger him, or imbroil the government: for where the injured party may be
relieved, and his damages repaired by appeal to the law, there can be no
pretence for force, which is only to be used where a man is intercepted from
appealing to the law: for nothing is to be accounted hostile force, but where
it leaves not the remedy of such an appeal; and it is such force alone, that
puts him that uses it into a state of war, and makes it lawful to resist him. A
man with a sword in his hand demands my purse in the high-way, when perhaps I
have not twelve pence in my pocket: this man I may lawfully kill. To another I
deliver 100l. to hold only whilst I alight, which he refuses to restore
me, when I am got up again, but draws his sword to defend the possession of it
by force, if I endeavour to retake it. The mischief this man does me is a
hundred, or possibly a thousand times more than the other perhaps intended me
(whom I killed before he really did me any); and yet I might lawfully kill the
one, and cannot so much as hurt the other lawfully. The reason whereof is
plain; because the one using force, which threatened my life, I could not have
time to appeal to the law to secure it: and when it was gone, it was too late
to appeal. The law could not restore life to my dead carcass: the loss was
irreparable; which to prevent, the law of nature gave me a right to destroy
him, who had put himself into a state of war with me, and threatened my
destruction. But in the other case, my life not being in danger, I may have the
benefit of appealing to the law, and have reparation for my 100l. that
way.

Sec.208. Fourthly, But if the unlawful acts done by the magistrate be
maintained (by the power he has got), and the remedy which is due by law, be by
the same power obstructed; yet the right of resisting, even in such manifest
acts of tyranny, will not suddenly, or on slight occasions, disturb the
government: for if it reach no farther than some private men's cases, though
they have a right to defend themselves, and to recover by force what by
unlawful force is taken from them; yet the right to do so will not easily
engage them in a contest, wherein they are sure to perish; it being as
impossible for one, or a few oppressed men to disturb the government, where the
body of the people do not think themselves concerned in it, as for a raving
mad-man, or heady malcontent to overturn a well settled state; the people being
as little apt to follow the one, as the other.

Sec.209. But if either these illegal acts have extended to the majority of
the people; or if the mischief and oppression has lighted only on some few, but
in such cases, as the precedent, and consequences seem to threaten all; and
they are persuaded in their consciences, that their laws, and with them their
estates, liberties, and lives are in danger, and perhaps their religion too;
how they will be hindered from resisting illegal force, used against them, I
cannot tell. This is an inconvenience, I confess, that attends all governments
whatsoever, when the governors have brought it to this pass, to be generally
suspected of their people; the most dangerous state which they can possibly put
themselves in. wherein they are the less to be pitied, because it is so easy to
be avoided; it being as impossible for a governor, if he really means the good
of his people, and the preservation of them, and their laws together, not to
make them see and feel it, as it is for the father of a family, not to let his
children see he loves, and takes care of them.

Sec.210. But if all the world shall observe pretences of one kind, and
actions of another; arts used to elude the law, and the trust of prerogative
(which is an arbitrary power in some things left in the prince's hand to do
good, not harm to the people) employed contrary to the end for which it was
given: if the people shall find the ministers and subordinate magistrates
chosen suitable to such ends, and favoured, or laid by, proportionably as they
promote or oppose them: if they see several experiments made of arbitrary
power, and that religion underhand favoured, (tho' publicly proclaimed against)
which is readiest to introduce it; and the operators in it supported, as much
as may be; and when that cannot be done, yet approved still, and liked the
better: if a long train of actions shew the councils all tending that way; how
can a man any more hinder himself from being persuaded in his own mind, which
way things are going; or from casting about how to save himself, than he could
from believing the captain of the ship he was in, was carrying him, and the
rest of the company, to Algiers, when he found him always steering that course,
though cross winds, leaks in his ship, and want of men and provisions did often
force him to turn his course another way for some time, which he steadily
returned to again, as soon as the wind, weather, and other circumstances would
let him?